I wandered deep into the old cotton fields, and heard the voices of the sad Afro-American saints again, last night. And in those moments, I saw the light of eternity. For, the pathways to divinity exist in certain micro-intervals between the seven music notes. Even in the academic circles...

The Gigging Life in Rural France I expect every area has its local circuit of regular gigs. There are always certain venues that feature in a band’s gigging diary. This would apply to any town or city and beyond them a wider rural area. A city often has designated...

Big Band Jazz. Part 1 — Preparation The old Boy Scout motto of ‘Be Prepared’ comes to mind as I begin this short article on preparation. It is very relevant to my current circumstances (and after all I WAS a Boy Scout). Upcoming projects mean I must prepare myself...

The Magix Buss—Part Three: What makes a good drum recording? For some time I borrowed a video camera off a chap I know and filmed myself playing drum solos in our (attached) barn. I was quite pleased with the results. Some time later another chap informed me that the sound...

The Magix Buss—Part Two The next step in my home recording journey came with some Magix software (Samplitude)…Magix have grown over the years, back then their stuff was simpler and cheaper and I learnt how to engineer and produce from it. I thus decided to record my acoustic...

The Magix Buss—Part One I have made every mistake under the sun when it comes to recording drums. Before 2006, my experience of recording (drums in particular) was in commercial analogue recording studios. Microphones… mixing desks… tape machines—the ‘red light’—an engineer! I have recorded in a number of studios...

Waiting for the Buss I was having a conversation with my wife just recently. At that time the beginning of 2017 was looking thin on the ground for gigs and musical sessions. Nothing much was happening in general and typically, I was bemoaning this state of affairs. But...

Using chopped up pieces of coconut tree branches as their electric guitars, bathroom buckets and broomsticks as their drum kit, and a soda bottle as their mike, recently, a band performed for the “mock” Rock event at Sofia College’s ‘Kaleidoscope’ fest. Then, they smashed their “musical instruments” on the...

When I was a teen, my room was stacked with electric guitars; an improvised amp, woofer, and tweeter; and an old drum kit with a wobbly, bass peddle that kept falling off every once in a while. Fortunately, I didn’t cut an album and become a legend like some...